Between 1914 and 1918, the First World War played out principally on the Western Front in Europe. A line more than 700 kilometres long between the North Sea and Switzerland, where the biggest battles of the Great War were fought: the Marne, the Artois, Champagne, Verdun, the Somme, Alsace, the Chemin des Dames…

A century later, a reporter is researching the area that was the Western Front during the First World War. Augustin…His parents had named him after Auguste Thin, the corporal who was given the job of choosing the unknown soldier who now lies at rest beneath the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

Augustin Berger has been asked to write a book about the four years of war. So he has gone in search of whatever evidence is still available. He is obsessed by one particular question: what were the feelings and thoughts of the millions of soldiers sent out to fight on the battlefields? How did those that came back manage to get through the conflict?

This is the story of a world war that was principally played out on the Western Front in Europe.